Water Quality Economics and Benefits

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Estimating the benefits of water quality programs instituted under the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA) is one of the requirements faced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is also an integral part of the Agency’s ongoing process to evaluate the contribution of its water quality programs to society. As a result, estimating the benefits of environmental regulation is one of the many procedural methods EPA uses to determine how it can be more effective in addressing the needs of society. To support these objectives, EPA has initiated a program to improve the data and methods used for estimating the benefits of its water quality programs.

A Retrospective Assessment of the Costs of the Clean Water Act: 1972 to 1997 (PDF)(615K)This study assesses the magnitude of costs of reducing water pollution incurred under the Clean Water Act in recent years. The approach taken in this study is to estimate not only recent nationwide costs of water pollution abatement but also to simulate and deduct from these estimates water pollution control costs that would have been incurred without the passage of the Clean Water Act.